


The world won’t protect you (that’s what I’m here for)

by Saral_Hylor



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Multi, TW: reference to transphobic attitudes, Trans Female Character, complete aversion to proper nouns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 03:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2566595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saral_Hylor/pseuds/Saral_Hylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It never mattered who she was or who she used to be. She was his best friend and he'd do anything to protect her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The world won’t protect you (that’s what I’m here for)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to quandong_crumble for the beta work. 
> 
> Thanks to quandong_crumble and Jeniouis for the encouragement and believing in this story.

He watched her from across the room, only half listening to the conversation going on around him. The majority of his attention had been dragged across the room with her when it had been her turn to buy drinks.

An elbow nudged into the side of his arm and he let his gaze flicker back to his girlfriend, who sat beside him. She was giving him a careful look, but it wasn’t disapproval she was looking at him with, it was a mixture of understanding and reassurance, trying to remind him that she would be okay without him always watching over her. He grinned in response, but he couldn’t stop himself from looking back at his best friend where she stood across the room, leaning against the bar, her bony shoulders poking out of the sleeves of the dress she’d chosen to wear.

He had wanted to protest against the dress, when they’d stopped by her house to pick her up, but his girlfriend had kicked him in the shin before he’d had a chance to say anything, and insisted that the dress, sky blue with an A-line skirt, was gorgeous, so he’d shut up and tried not to frown too much.

He knew he shouldn’t worry so much, shouldn’t feel so protective when it came to her, but she was like a sister to him. They’d known each other for what felt like forever, they knew each other’s secrets, he’d been the first person she’d ever told about who she wanted to be, and he loved her like family. She was tougher than she looked, he knew that, it didn’t matter that she was only five foot four, it didn’t stop her from getting into fights when she thought it was for the right cause. 

He took a deep breath and let out a sigh, taking his girlfriend’s hand under the table and trying to focus back on the conversation around him. 

 

 

It hadn’t always been that way, hanging out with friends, going out to bars, feeling fiercely protective over her, the fact that she was wearing dresses that showed off her shoulders and knobbly collar bones with skirts that stopped three inches above her knees. There had been a time when they’d walk to school together, nudging each other with their shoulders as they walked. He used to feel protective back then, but there were fewer threats in school, and back then she wasn’t comfortable enough to let anyone but him near her. When they were pretty much all each other had, the only real family left. Family by choice, not by system-appointed placements. 

There were the days when he’d painstakingly learnt how to braid her hair, making attempt after attempt until it finally stayed smooth enough. Until he could braid it in a few minutes before class, when she had Phys Ed or Home Ec, or right before school photos. Just as she was the one who taught him to tie a tie, and it would be her fingers straightening out his efforts before assembly every day. 

There were the days he learnt how to patch up spilt lips and ice black eyes, how to disinfect busted knuckles – both his and hers – and how to wash blood out of white school shirts in bathroom sinks so neither of them would get in trouble when they got back to their homes.

There were days before that, earlier on when they were kids, gap teethed and skinned knees. Back when she was all big eyes and pale cheeks, blonde hair cut short and the buttons on her shirt done all the way up. Back when everyone called her _him_ and he didn’t know how to see past the gap teeth to realise those smiles weren’t real. Her mother had seen it though. She was the first one to get it right. 

 

 

He remembered the days after she changed her name and started to grow out her hair, back when he forgot to call her the right name and when he struggled to understand where his best friend had gone and why he’d suddenly been replaced by a girl with pigtails and dresses. 

It didn’t change the fact that the first fight she got into he couldn’t just stand by and let them call her a freak, or say she should stop wearing dresses and cut her hair. It was then that he realised it didn’t matter what she looked like on the outside, she was his best friend, and they were together ‘til the end of the line. They went home with black eyes and busted knuckles, blood staining their teeth, but they smiled the whole way home. 

 

 

There was a guy talking to her, a bar stool between them as they both leant on the bar. He didn’t look a whole lot older than them, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen the guy there before. It made his hackles rise and red lights started to flash. The guy was all stylishly messy hair, confidence and a permanent smirk. They were instant warning signs. 

If it wasn’t for the grip of his girlfriend’s hand on his, he would have been up out of his seat and over at the bar before the guy had the chance to lean a little closer. With one hand practically pinned to the seat of the booth they occupied, all he could do was watch as her shoulders relaxed a little and she turned to talk to the guy. Her shy, awkward smile was evident from across the room, as was the nervous habit she’d picked up in school of ducking her head and tucking her hair behind one ear. 

Only he knew that it was all a subtle way for her to glance down at her chest to make sure everything was exactly as it should be. 

He remembered being there with her and his girlfriend when they’d gone bra shopping. He remembered the one that she’d looked at so longingly, the one that male model had advertised, she’d tried it on and showed them, bright red from her ears right down her chest, but she’d looked like a girl. Then she’d taken the bra off and put it back on the hanger because it was too expensive for her to justify getting. He had remembered the size and bought it for her with his next pay cheque. 

He watched as they swapped numbers, the guy taking her phone and laughing, eyes glinting good naturedly, at how old it was, before proceeding to enter his number regardless. She returned to the booth smiling and blushing. Her smile slipped away when their eyes met and he knew she could see the disapproval in his face even as his girlfriend was digging her fingernails into the back of his hand telling him to behave himself. 

He couldn’t behave himself, even though he tried to be so careful of her feelings and the way that his girlfriend kept looking at him every time he went to open his mouth. 

His silence lasted until he found out she’d been texting the guy since they met at the bar and that he wanted to go out on a date with her. 

That was when he couldn’t stop himself from saying something. It was for her own safety. It wasn’t like he wanted to hurt her feelings. 

He just wanted to protect her. 

She argued back, saying that she’d be okay, but he didn’t believe that she would be. She accused him of not trusting her, but it wasn’t her he didn’t trust, it was the rest of the world, the guy who would no doubt find out what she was and then she’d get hurt. It was all the people who could hurt her that he didn’t trust. 

She ignored what he said, ignored all the good points he made and said she wanted to go anyway, that she could look after herself. 

She tried to go out the door when he grabbed her arm, he just wanted to stop her for a second longer, to make her listen. Then he said all the wrong things. He said one of the meanest things he’d ever said to her. 

He said she couldn’t be anyone’s girlfriend because she wasn’t a girl. 

He knew he deserved the black eye she gave him. 

 

 

He didn’t see her. A day went past, then two, then a week. She didn’t answer her phone, and on top of that his girlfriend stopped talking to him. 

The words he yelled echoed around the silence of his apartment. He wanted to take them back, to go back and stop himself from ever saying them. But there was no way to take back what he said, no way to undo the hurt he caused. 

It was nearly three weeks before he saw her again, and it was only after repeated unanswered phone calls that he decides he had to do something about it. He went to her apartment, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise when it was the guy who opened the door. He had the same messed up hair, but the perpetual smirk was gone, instead the guy just looked tired and angry. He asked if he could see her and the guy glared at him and said things the he knew he deserved to be called. But it was the other things the guy said that he knew were the most important. That guy, with all the charm he’d shown at the bar, didn’t care about her past, about who she used to be. He liked her for who she was and who she wanted to be. He wanted to make her happy. 

He knew that he had to step back and stop trying to protect her from everything in the world. 

That he didn’t need to protect her from all of it. 

She came to the door, hurt in her eyes and hidden behind tight lips and balled fists. He apologised to her, told her that he never should have said those things to her. That she had every right to be angry at him, and he could tell by the betrayal in her eyes that it would take a lot more than grovelling to get back to being her best friend. Because he'd hurt her the way he had always been scared the world would. Because it didn’t matter if she was that little boy with his buttons done up the whole way and missing front teeth, or if she was the young woman with occasionally busted knuckles and wearing dresses, she had always been his best friend, and he'd do anything to get that back. He had to be there for her, ‘til the end of the line. 

Even if he didn’t have to protect her from the whole world. Just some of it. 

Just those parts she couldn’t protect herself from. 


End file.
